An awesome way to wrap up three days of convention activities, TREKtacular is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for fanboys and fangirls to see some of the biggest Star Trek names all in one place in a Midwest venue. To be held as Planet Comicon 2014 comes to a close, TREKtacular will feature a lively show with the entire original bridge crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation minus Picard, along with Star Trek original series star and now pop-culture icon William Shatner. The event will be held in the Kansas City Convention Center at 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday, March 16, 2014.

Tickets for this event will go on sale tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. Central time, through Ticketmaster, and range from $49.50 to premier seating at $149.50 (a steal considering the number of guests being brought together and comparable event prices at the Sprint Center across town, and cheaper than good seats at a Chiefs or Royals game!). There’s been a lot of buzz generated and demand is high so make sure you buy early tomorrow before the event sells out. And for those who can’t make it to the convention, you don’t have to buy a ticket to Planet Comicon to attend this event.

More information is available at the Planet Comicon 2014 website. Come and join borg.com for this incredible NextGen reunion, and a chance at seeing William Shatner in action!

The director of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Time Bandits, Brazil, The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus has a new film coming soon to a theater near you. Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem stars two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz, that incredible actor who dazzled in the two Quentin Tarentino films Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. He plays a very, very strange computer hacker named Qohen Leth who is attempting to use science to explain human existence, but keeps getting interrupted. If you checked out the borg.com recommended reading Numbercruncher reviewed here last month, this off-the-hook film may be right for you.

The first trailer for The Zero Theorem swept like wildfire across Twitter and Facebook in the past two days. Like many of Gilliam’s prior screen works, or even a Tarentino film, this movie oozes with the bizarre.

Other selling points are the fine British genre thespians David Thewlis, who played our favorite Hogwarts mentor Professor Lupin, and Ben Whishaw, star of The Hour and the new Q in the last two James Bond films. Oh, yeah–and Matt Damon plays the “Management.”

Evoking the best of the classic Warner Bros. Merry Melodies cartoons, Brazilian artist Gustavo Duarte’s new book of comics is one of those works that you’d mistake for a classic you read as a kid, only maybe slightly a bit more twisted. The pace and themes of Monsters! & Other Stories recalls Nick Park’s Wallace & Gromit animated shorts, good company for this visual treat completely without words.

Duarte mixes humor and the askew in his first of three stories, “Có!” (the sound of a rooster) about a farmer about to relax with a drink, who suddenly finds himself thrust into a bizarre encounter with his pigs, a giant chicken and an alien spacecraft. Something here evokes the strange tale of Bugs Bunny and his giant orange monster from the Looney Toons “Bugs the Beautician,” or maybe the other Loony Toons favorite, “A Sheep in the Deep,” with Ralph the wolf and Sam the sheepdog.

“Birds” follows an anthropomorphic bird in suit on his day at the office who wages war against death itself, and a particularly bad pot of coffee. The story quickly spirals into a morbid flight from death with the bird’s co-worker, resulting in a nasty–and gory–outcome for the pair.

If you’re still waiting to see who is going to pick up the reins and turn Gentle Giant’s Honey Trap Army into a comic book series, the next best thing may be at your local comic book store right now. It’s Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto’s new Black Widow biweekly series from Marvel Comics. What does it have to do with the Honey Trap Army? Nothing really, except that Natasha Romanoff as realized by the 1960s style art of Phil Noto would fit right in with the mod-inspired team of high-end assassin action figures.

You’ll get the feeling you’re reading something with plenty of potential, storytelling on par with Jason Aaron’s Thor, God of Thunder. In a similar way as Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye created a story of a second-level Avenger apart from the world of the Avengers, Edmondson’s Black Widow is on her own and carving out her own life in this new series. She’s still working with the Avengers, but this story is about how she spends the rest of her time. And like Hawkeye has his pal Lucky Dog, Natasha almost has her own pet cat. Almost.

She’s an assassin turned paid killer, a distinction that has real meaning for Natasha, who is taking on her own mercenary projects for good pay but not for personal gain. It’s all part of her atonement for past sins, a process she is both forging ahead and wrestling with. She has an able if not seemingly foppish aide in this endeavor, a buttoned-shirt lawyer named Mr. Ross, who selects assignments to take any subjective influences away from what projects are selected for Natasha to pursue. At her request. And we learn even he is full of surprises.

The latest installment in Weta Workshop’s hardcover series focusing on the art and design of The Hobbit movies provides the most-in-depth look yet at the developmental stages of bringing J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantastical world to the big screen. Through hundreds of pencil sketches, detailed accounts of the thoughts behind decisions, painted concept art and costume development, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Chronicles–Art & Design provides a comprehensive account of the mastery in bringing ideas to life.

The structure of the book follows our heroes’ journey through the film, in chapters like “Queer Lodgings” (Beorn the Skin-Changer’s house), “Flies & Spiders,” “The Woodland Realm” (the elves), “A Ruined form of Life” (the Orcs), and “Inside Information” (all about Smaug). Each chapter provides a focused look at the unique worldbuilding for each disparate part of the film, from set design to backstory to costumes. Many chapters offer better looks at details that were only glimpsed briefly in the film, like the city of Dale in its heyday, seen onscreen only in flashback. It’s an opportunity for those parts of the filmmaking–given just as much thought and work as anything in the movie–to be seen and admired in their full glory.

A chapter on the Elves of Mirkwood showcases the costumes for King Thranduil, Legolas, and Tauriel, as well as the woodland realm where the dwarves are imprisoned during the film. There’s a special focus on the wine cellars where the dwarves make their dramatic barrel escape. Much time is given to the development of Tauriel, a new character created for the movie. Comments from Evangeline Lily (Tauriel) provide insight into her character: “Tauriel had to embody the grace of Galadriel and Arwen, while representing the fighting stealth and power of Legolas and Elrond.”

If you had any doubts about this year’s Planet Comicon being the biggest and best comic book and pop culture convention in the history of the region, you might not have been paying attention. With William Shatner, nearly the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lee Majors, Firefly’s Jewel Staite, John Ratzenberger from Cheers and The Empire Strikes Back, Zoie Palmer from Lost Girl, and Walking Dead’s Chad Coleman, plus an onslaught of comic book creators including Neal Adams and James Robinson, you’ve got a busy weekend ahead of you. But if you need more coaxing to make the drive or flight into Kansas City March 14-16, 2014, here it is. Sylvester McCoy, the lovable Radagast the Brown from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and Doctor Who’s Seventh Doctor has joined the slate of headliners for this year’s show.

McCoy is currently in theaters in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug as the wizard of the woodland creatures–one of the best realized characters of Peter Jackson’s monumental fantasy trilogy. He was last seen in the 50th anniversary special The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, along with David Tennant, Peter Davison, Paul McGann, and Colin Baker. If you missed this one, watch it online here. McCoy if a very funny guy.

Before that you might have seen the Scottish actor in Doctor Who: The Movie, where he made his last appearance as The Doctor, before getting killed in San Francisco and regenerating into Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor, or the mini-series Doctor Who: Death Comes to Time, or one of his many audiobooks for Big Finish Productions.

So what are you waiting for? Get your tickets now and get your Doctor Who and Middle-Earth fix at Planet Comicon 2014. Get all the details at the con’s website here.

Earlier this week I reviewed British author Tim Lebbon’s latest exciting novel, Alien: Out of the Shadows, (see the review here) the first in a trilogy of new novels in the Alien universe, which takes us on a perilous mission with none other than sci-fi/horror icon Ellen Ripley. This week we caught up with the Bram Stoker Award winning author and asked him about this latest project. You might know Tim from any of his several novels, including Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi–Into the Void, novelizations of 30 Days of Night (a New York Times Bestseller), and The Cabin in the Woods, or his Hellboy novels.

CB: It’s not every day someone asks an author to tell a story in what is being marketed as canon for a major sci-fi and horror franchise. It sounds like an exciting opportunity. How did you approach the project?

TL: It’s very exciting! I’ve been an Alien fan since I saw the first film in my teens, and Aliens is probably my favourite film. I’d wanted to write an Alien novel for a long time, and when this opportunity arose I agreed in about three seconds. It was a slightly unusual project in that Fox came up with the very basic outline for the three new books — about a page per novel — and asked the three of us (me, James A. Moore and Christopher Golden) to construct our own ideas around their concept. It was an interesting process, and once I had my proposal approved by Fox it was pretty much plain sailing. They made a couple of suggestions about the finished novel — good ones! — and I’m thrilled with the final product.

CB: Bridging these two films allows you only a very specific opening to create a new story. Ellen Ripley is in stasis at the end of the original Alien and the beginning of its sequel, Aliens. Where did the idea come from to locate Out of the Shadows at this point in time?

The all-star cast ensemble movie is alive and well (well maybe not “well”) thanks to The Expendables franchise. It’s a forum for action film stars of the past to tell everyone they think they still have what it takes, whether they really do or not. You can whistle along to the Colonel Bogey March as you check out the teaser for the third installment due out this summer, The Expendables 3. We included it as one of our entries on our 2014 “movies to watch” list, with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Statham, Jet Li, and Dolph Lundgren back, along with Antonio Banderas, Wesley Snipes, and Kelsey Grammer–and Mel Gibson as the show’s villain. Wait a second… once of these guys doesn’t fit the action hero mold so much. Then there is The Expendables newbie Harrison Ford. What? Is Ford taking every gig that comes along these days?

Along with plenty of extra-long action sequences you can usually find a few fun scenes between these personalities in these films.

With Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude van Damme, Mickey Rourke, and Chuck Norris in the prior outings, we’re still left wondering one question: Where the heck is Steven Seagal?

Columbia Pictures and MGM released an electronic press kit today chock full of footage from the new RoboCop movie starring Joel Kinnaman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, and Gary Oldman. We’ve also got the latest TV spot promoting the film about one of our favorite borg heroes. If you haven’t yet determined if this latest remake of a classic sci-fi flick is for you, here’s the TV spot and six scenes from the movie to help you decide:

You might think you’ve seen it all with five Alien feature films featuring the vile and merciless Xenomorphs. You might really think you’ve seen everything about Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley from the spaceship Nostromo. Ripley, the tough-as-nails heroine of the franchise played by Sigourney Weaver, was the lone human survivor of Alien (1979), and she led the charge against a Xenomorph attack in the sequel Aliens (1986), to come back again after her escape pod crashes onto a penal colony planet in Alien³ (1992), and finally return 200 years later as a human/Alien, Terminator-inspired hybrid clone in Alien: Resurrection (1997). Ripley is on so many best-of lists, like Best Action Heroine and Top 100 Best Genre Character, that it’s impossible to count. Ripley didn’t make an appearance in either Aliens vs Predator (2007) or Ridley Scott’s return to the Alien universe in 2012’s Prometheus, but has appeared in various incarnations in comic book spinoffs. Well you haven’t seen the last of Ripley. To quote the series’ often used tagline, The bitch is back.

A new trilogy series begins later this month, with Tim Lebbon’s Alien: Out of the Shadows. Surprisingly it bridges the period between Alien and Aliens. That’s right, Alien: Out of the Shadows pulls apart what you think happened to Ripley between entering into her deep stasis sleep at the end of Alien and her rescue from that sleep at the beginning of Aliens. And Lebbon does it in a way fans of the series might not flinch at. More importantly he takes Ripley on a nonstop, perilous mission that is as engaging as the grittiest and most exciting scenes in the franchise, the military mission in Aliens.

Chris “Hoop” Hooper works as chief engineer on a mining vessel called the Marion, as part of a Kelland Mining Company search for a rare metal called Trimonite. Kelland is, of course, a subsidiary of Weyland-Yutani—the company that controls everything in the future. Without wasting any paper, Lebbon catches us up with the Marion as two mining vessels go out of control in response to an invasion by certain familiar space “monsters.” The ships ram the Marion–limiting anyone’s chances at survival, at ever leaving the orbit of the seemingly unextraordinary planet below, and causing the Marion to slowly descend to be burnt up in the planet’s atmosphere. Jordan is the Marion’s experienced captain (and Hoop’s former love interest), Lachance is a level-headed pilot but he’s a pessimistic sort, Josh Baxter is the ship’s communications officer (and makes a good cocktail), Karen Sneddon is a hardened, intelligent science officer, Garcia is the nervous medic, and Kasyanov the doctor, with Powell and Welford engineers that keep the Marion’s crew alive for more than eleven weeks until Ripley’s shuttle auto-docks with them, 15 days before they predict they will get too close to the planet and burn up.